Mr. Soichiro Hirai, a second-year master’s course student of Special Educational Program on River Basin Environmental Science in Department of Engineering, received the Outstanding Poster Presentation Award at the 8th SURF International Workshop.

Mr. Soichiro Hirai, a second-year master’s course student of Special Educational Program on River Basin Environmental Science in Department of Engineering (supervisor: Prof. Eiji Haramoto, Interdisciplinary Center for River Basin Environment), received the Outstanding Poster Presentation Award at the 8th SURF International Workshop held on December 19-21, 2023, at the Mahidol University Kanchanaburi Campus, Thailand. This award is given to a presenter who performed best in his/her poster presentation.
The title of Mr. Hirai’s presentation was “Development and validation of a method for simultaneous detection of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A virus in wastewater.” To utilize wastewater-based epidemiology, which aims to determine the incidence of infectious diseases in communities by measuring pathogens in wastewater, in the COVID-19 era, he developed and validated a method for simultaneous detection of SARS-CoV-2, an etiological agent of COVID-19, and influenza A virus in wastewater.
Mr. Hirai, said, “I am very honored to receive this award. I would like to thank Prof. Haramoto, Dr. Bikash Malla, and all the members of our laboratory for their kind guidance in my research. I will continue to work hard to further deepen this research.”